Okay, so how weird does something have to be before it’s officially weird?
I started a book back in 2015, Beauty for Ashes, a contemporary romance.
I’m writing along, with details springing up and coming to life as I go, and I realize I have to find a home for one of my main characters, Travis Fischer. I need him to be from a very rural area, pretty much cut off from what we might consider average American life. I mean, it’s not the Grapes of Wrath, but it’s rustic to the point that you have to drive for a while to get to a mall; that’s what I’m looking for. It doesn’t have to be a real place mind you, I could just make something up, but one of the things I enjoy as an avid reader myself is the setting. My Dad loved to explore new places, and so do I. I read about a location, and I want to see it for myself someday. I didn’t want to invent Travis’s hometown, I wanted it to be an actual location, a place. Call it a fetish if you must.
I start searching Google thinking okay, Wyoming’s rural, Montana, maybe Idaho… I don’t know. Geography was never my strong suit. Whatever my unscientific research process, I end up staring at Buffalo, MT on my computer screen, the little red Google pin sticking out in the middle of nowhere. Bingo! Looks like we have a winner. I open up the little info column on the side to find a picture of this old dilapidated brick building, the First State Bank of Buffalo. This suckers so old, the roof is eroded away. Not collapsed, not weathered, -eroded. The tops of the walls are gone, and where they end, some of the bricks are wind-worn. Old. It’s one of only a couple of pictures posted, but the location and the area, in general, fit the criteria I need for my character.
I start making stuff up, Travis’ backstory, how he gets from point A to point B arriving in Bainbridge Island, WA, where the majority of the book takes place. See, Travis is hecka hunky, male-model handsome. But he’s not conceited, he doesn’t go through women like they were hot sauce packets at Taco Bell. He’s actually kind of shy, old-fashioned, considerate. He’s also a pastor and a twenty-seven-year-old virgin. I needed him insulated during his formative years, somewhere where pop culture wouldn’t corrupt him. I needed him to be realistically pure for people who don’t think abstinence or celibacy are realistic or attainable goals for average people who have the same sex drive as everybody else. I needed readers who wouldn’t automatically consider reserving sex for marriage ordinary, to be able to believe Travis could be a real person. So, with those readers in mind, I invented my little fantasy world around Buffalo, MT, where good old Travis, raised as a God-fearing young man by his grandparents, makes it to college a virgin. The values instilled in him by the salt of the earth people who raised him, stick when he’s inundated as a young adult by women eager to catch his eye and a culture that doesn’t promote abstinence.
By sheer virtue of his knee-buckling appearance, he’s got a target on his back.
So you get the picture. Travis is not only from Buffalo, MT; he’s also from the 1950’s.
Fast forward, 2017. A little more than a month from Beauty for Ashes’ launch date, I’m doing one last read through before handing out manuscript copies to a couple of friends for proofreading and final review.
I’m still tweaking, not happy with one scene in particular and have a bright idea to make it pop, but there’s one little detail I want to get right. I look up good old Buffalo, MT on Google.maps again to get a specific detail correct. But what to my wondering eyes should appear? More pictures of Buffalo, MT.
The thing is, by now I can tell you about the Fischer farm, where Travis grew up. It’s an old place, worn and tired, but it gets the job done; -barely. The big old barn houses a handful of horses and cows, as well as a stray cat or two, though it’s in need of a fresh coat of paint and some repairs. I can hear the screen door to the 1940’s farmhouse creak open and slam shut as Travis’ grandpa heads out to mend the fence his neighbor just told him is down. These American farmers have been struggling for not just years, but decades, to survive. Travis’ grandparents never shied away from hard work, it’s all they knew. When the truck broke down, you fixed it, and when the roof leaked, you covered it with tarp till you could afford the materials to make a real patch. Even then, an old fence board or two might be mixed in with the new lumber.
I imagined the little community church where the forty-three residents of the unincorporated county area called Buffalo, gathered to worship God every Sunday morning for a century now. The old pastor offered Travis a job there once he was ordained. He took it and stayed till Grandma passed. The church didn’t need a second pastor, heck the first one farmed his own land while shepherding the little flock, but Travis wanted to stay near Grandma since Grandpa died a few month earlier, so the old man gave him a job. That’s how it is in Buffalo, -you take care of your own.
Buffalo is a very real place, but one Buffalo exists in Montana, and another one exists between my ears. I had to make it up, the details. Though many of them never made it to the pages of my book, they had to be real to me. So what I couldn’t learn from Google about population, climate, and road maps, I filled in with pretend.
Looking at the pictures added in September of 2016, I saw exactly what I’d pictured in my mind.
Exactly.
How weird is that?
Seriously. I’m freaking out here.
There was even a home-made map indicating ‘you are here’ while numbers listing residents coincide to their location. Joe Smith #23, Johnson Ranch #31, John & Jane Doe, #8, … I have to admit, I scrolled down the list, looking for Fischer. Alas, there was none. Of course, they’ve been gone four, five years now; -their boy moved out to Seattle.
Unless you’re a writer, I can’t imagine you could understand how real these worlds we create become. They have to, or we could never make them real for you. But I’m telling you straight up, the eerie similarities between the Buffalo in my head and the Buffalo I’m looking at on my computer are downright scary; so much so that I go screaming to my husband, “Come here! You have to see this!” I ramble on for a half-hour pointing out one mind-blowing similarity after another, all the while thinking that when we finally get around to taking the long RV trips we’ve talked about for thirty years, we have GOT to stop in Buffalo, MT.
Before I spill out the last of my rant and inform him of this fact, he interrupts me to say, “We’ve got to go see this place; we’ll have to drive through on one of our RV trips.”
I love my husband.
I sit here wondering if it’s due to the fact Beauty for Ashes was written for the glory of God that my brain is trying to reboot. See, I don’t put much stock in the word ‘coincidence’; not with a God who cares so much about details. I never expected to be a writer, but a few years back, God laid on my heart to tell my families story, and I did. I had no clue what I was doing, but I published it in May of 2016. Some form of creativity which I’d never experienced before unlocked in me. I’d always considered myself a decent writer and thought I could write a book without too much trouble, I just didn’t have an idea for one. Then all of a sudden out of nowhere, ideas for books start POURING into my psyche at a rate I couldn’t keep up with. I’ve currently got a dozen manuscripts on my computer, nine only needing editing before I publish. There are outlines for another five and scrawled down basic premises for four more. What they all have in common, is that they’re love stories, (I’m a sucker for romance) that also deal with issues today’s church is grappling with. Alcoholism, abuse, adultery, parenting, self-esteem, a past that won’t stay buried, death, and even today’s hottest button issues, homosexuality, and abortion.
As I near the end of the journey to get Beauty for Ashes published, is God giving me a pat on the back for completing this assignment by taking me on a tour of my beloved little Buffalo? Is He giving me confirmation that I’m doing what I’m supposed to? Sometimes I wonder. I mean I served in ministry for twenty years in a variety of ways: Worship Leader, Drama Director, Women’s Bible Study facilitator, Prayer Team, …I published the church newsletter and posted current events to the website. Ministry is hands on, shoulder to shoulder with other members of the body. Writing isn’t; you’re very much a lone wolf. Can creating silly, goofy, entertaining love stories actually be considered a ministry? It sounds so …fluffy. Kinda like I often felt leading the Drama Ministry. Other people did meaty, real ministries, like feeding the hungry and visiting the sick; the stuff Jesus said to do.
I saw many people come to Christ as a result of the Drama Ministry, though. It took me a while to concede that it was indeed, a real ministry. The potential audience I can reach through vehicles like Amazon and the internet is exponentially greater.
So I ask again… Can writing romance indeed be considered a ministry? If it’s written from an eternal perspective, yes, I believe it can.
Wow, God. Just …wow!
** I wrote this at the end of January, but never posted it. I wanted to let it sit for a while to see if I really wanted to put out there. But after finding Grey’s Anatomy back on my DVR after their winter break a couple of days later, to my astonishment, they had a character actually say they were from Bainbridge Island when they’ve never mentioned the little Seattle suburb before…
Coincidence?
Hmmm……
Reese Johansen 